Abwoon d'bwashmaya
The first words of the “Lord’s Prayer,” the way Jesus would have said them in the language he spoke, are Abwoon d’bwashmaya.
        Experiencing the familiar in new ways can inspire new understandings
        and appreciations.

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The Balance Pole (click here to read this lens)
The great high-wire artist Karl Wallenda fell to his death because he wouldn’t let go of his balance pole when hanging on to it put him at risk.
        Companies and individuals often need to “unlearn” their most
        cherished beliefs and practices.

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Bird-Brained Logic
Recalling a rule an old salt passed on to him when he first joined the navy – “If it moves, salute it; if it doesn’t, paint it” – paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould observes the costs in nature of either-or thinking.
        Individuals and companies stuck in binary logic are unlikely to
        prosper in the long run.

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The Bolero Challenge
A noted symphony conductor describes a central challenge of leading Ravel’s Bolero: Keeping the accompaniment and the melody working together smoothly.
        In every domain of business and personal life, a key to success is
        orchestrating what’s in the background along with what’s in the
        foreground.

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The Caterpillar
Best-selling business writer Anthony Athos employed the image of the caterpillar transforming into a butterfly – “...his legs are falling off, he’s drying out and rotting...” – to dramatize the true experience of transformation.
        Understanding the caterpillar is essential for understanding deep
        change.

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Einstein's Compass
An ordinary pocket compass, given to him by his father when he was a small boy, fired Albert Einstein's deepest curiosity, producing a sense of wonder that motivated him throughout his life.
       Organizations thrive when they draw on the curiosity, wonder, and
       problem-solving tenacity of all employees.

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Figure and Ground
Do you see a white chalice on a black background or two black faces on a white background?
        How we deal with information – what we highlight and what we
        treat as background – can make the difference between routine
        and insight.

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The Fly in the Urinal
Etchings of flies in airport urinals, according to the Wall Street Journal, “reduce spillage by 80%” because they provide something to aim at.
        There’s a parallel there for business and personal life – but beware
        of the human instinct to overcomplicate things.

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The Garden Path
“The man who hunts ducks out on weekends.” That’s a garden-path sentence, where what comes last undermines what came before. Jokes and optical illusions often work on the same principle.
        When organizations or individuals behave in “garden-path” ways,
        frustration, confusion, and disappointment result.

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The Homunculus
Your brain has a very inaccurate image of how your body is put together, because it’s based on how many nerve endings different parts of your body have. Scientists call that mistaken self-image the “homunculus.” Organizations and individuals often have similarly inaccurate self-concepts, resulting from a similar phenomenon – what information they pay attention to and what they disregard.
        When your perception of yourself doesn't square with reality,
        problems follow.

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The Insect-Size Buffalo
An anthropologist studying a tribe that lived in dense jungle took a man named Kenge on a ride to the open plains. “Kenge looked down to where a herd of about a hundred buffalo were grazing some miles away. He asked me what kind of insects they were, and I told him they were buffalo, twice as big as the forest buffalo known to him. He laughed loudly and told me not to tell such stupid stories....”
        Many organizational and personal problems result from an inability
        to tell how big (or how small) something really is.

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The Itsy Bitsy Spider
The great essayist Robert Fulghum called “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” “the fight song of the human race” and compared it to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
        Or, you could see it as an emblem of the shoddy ways that too many
        organizations view the world and treat their employees and other
        stakeholders.

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The Louis Armstrong Effect
After hearing Louis Armstrong play, a white teenager named Charles Black questioned the racist views he’d been brought up with. For the rest of his life, Black fought as a lawyer and a law professor for true “liberty and justice for all.”
        You never know how the expression of your own genius will affect
     others – but it will, and it could change the world.

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The Mile Run
The great football player Earl Campbell did some things magnificently, but he couldn’t meet his team’s requirement for completing a mile run. His coach, Bum Phillips, handled that in a wise and funny way.
        Policies have their place, but not at the expense of common sense.

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The Million-Dollar Parrot
Negotiation expert William Ury told the tale of a shopkeeper who demanded a million dollars for a prized parrot but eventually settled for something else.
        When companies and individuals overvalue things, it can mean
        trouble for them and opportunity for others.

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The Puddle
Novelist Douglas Adams imagined a puddle thinking, “This is an interesting world I find myself in – an interesting hole I find myself in. Fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well – must have been made to have me in it!” Things changed when the sun came out.
       Being too comfortable can be the first step toward being gone.

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The Scent on the Floor
When a frustrated Estée Lauder poured a bottle of perfume onto the carpet at the finest department store in Paris, she changed the future of her company.
        In today’s transparent, interconnected world, the “scent” you leave
     behind can build your business or tear it down.

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Signature Move
Hockey Hall-of-Famer Brett Hull tells rising stars, “The way to get the scouts to remember you is to develop a signature move – something you do so well that whenever your name is mentioned, everyone will have a picture of you in their mind.”
        Companies and individuals all have signature moves, for better or
        for worse.

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Spencer's Warbler
When science genius Richard Feynman was a boy, he asked his father the name of a bird they saw on a walk together. His father answered, “You can know the name of that bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing – that’s what counts.”
        Education acquired or applied on autopilot can miss what really
        matters.

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The Stirrup
Historian Lyn White makes a compelling case that the dominant political system of the Middle Ages, feudalism, came about as a result of the invention of the stirrup.
        The future is being created today by small things that we might
        overlook.

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